What is democracy?

The word democracy comes from the Ancient Greek demos meaning "the people" and kratia meaning rule, strength, and power. Demos+kratia creates the greek word demokratia (democracy, or literally, the rule of the people or the power of the people or the strength of the people).

According to the Cambridge dictionary, the definition of democracy is as follows: "The belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves"


Democracy was first implemented in Ancient Greece and city-states. In theory, all citizens had the right to vote and say their opinion in the parliament, but women, slaves, and those who were not citizens of that city-state did not have these rights. These are basically what we know about democracy in Ancient Greece.

Democracy has always been the subject of debate in history. When we examine the words of famous philosophers about democracy, we see that many philosophers say that democracy is a process leading to despotism.

What is despotism?

Despotism is a form of government with a single administrative authority that rules with absolute political power, whether by an individual or a tightly interconnected group.

Democracy passes into despotism.
Plato

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
Aristotle

“Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.”
Fisher Ames

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies."
Ron Paul


My opinion is, the main reason that democracy is correlated with despotism is that it is a vulnerable system. It is very easy for greedy people to deceive uneducated people with cheap stories. They simply have to convince 51% of the people. Socrates's views are important at this point.

Plato's Republic presents a critical view of democracy through the narration of Socrates: "foolish leaders of Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike."

As a result, the systems will be subjected to abuse as long as they are malicious politicians and corporations using the government power. Transformation of democracy into despotism is just one of them. We need to come up with a better solution.

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